Infinite Loop —

Apple exec talks about the MacBook Air

Todd Benjamin of Apple PR talks up the MacBook Air, but gives no rundown on …

Ken Mingis, writing for Computerworld, had a chance to interview Todd Benjamin, director of Portables Product Marketing for Apple, about the MacBook Air. Benjamin's responses give a very little insight into the new laptop, like who, exactly, is it for.

"MacBook Air is designed for people who value portability," Benjamin said. "We make a lot of portable computers, but this one is designed for someone who's going to take it from place to place all day long, [executives] going to meetings, students going from class to class, people who are going to compute from anywhere. It's radically thin."

Radically thin is good, as long as it's not Keira Knightley-thin, which would be too thin—but thin is definitely good. Somewhat ironically, so is "full-size," at least when it comes to display and keyboard. Benjamin points out that computers with "an 11-inch screen" often have an undersized keyboard. Of course, Apple used to make laptops with 12-inch screens, which presumably did not have undersized keyboards. Unfortunately, why the MacBook Air did not use a 12-inch display to save a little weight and size does not come up for discussion.

Benjamin does hit the "mutli-touch" talking point regarding the trackpad, but there's no word on whether that will be part of the allegedly-imminent MacBook Pro revision. He also describes the SSD option as adding value for "portability," as in durability over a mechanical hard drive. Regarding ports, or the lack thereof, it's all about wireless for mouse, keyboard, and printing with the MacBook Air. A DVI port was included because "a fair number of users need to use a projector or want to hook up to a full-size display at home or office."

Sadly, battery life did not come up in the discussion at all. This is excruciatingly annoying, as the numbers on battery life are all over the place. The reviews of the HDD and SSD model by Ars Technica put battery life on the low end at two to three hours, while some others say three to four hours. A few even say four to five hours under certain circumstances. Since Apple is touting the MacBook Air as getting up to five hours of "wireless productivity," you would think battery life might, you know, actually be discussed. Perhaps in conjunction with the word "thin."